Philosophy 361		Ethics		Darwall		Fall 1997

METAETHICS IV -- RELATIVISM

I  	Fundamental Dilemma of Metaethics-- We have been supposing that we 
could only choose between admitting ethical facts and rejecting them.  But maybe 
there is an alternative--there are "relative" ethical facts. 

II  Some initial distinctions:
	A.  agent's relativism vs. appraiser's relativism.  The former holds that 
whether an agent acts rightly or wrongly can only be assessed by applying 
standards that the agent accepts or is committed to accepting.  In the sense we are 
interested in, this is not really relativistic, since it holds there to be absolute facts 
about whether, say, Jones acted rightly or wrongly.  It just makes that depend on 
Jones's own standards. 
	The more interesting relativism for our purposes is appraiser's (or 
appraiser's group) relativism.  This holds that the validity or truth of an ethical 
belief can only be assessed by using the standards of the person (or of the group of 
the person) who holds the belief--i.e. who makes the ethical appraisal.  
	Take an example.  Claudia is considering whether to have an abortion 
under certain circumstances.  Alice and Barbara consider the question whether she 
should have it.  Alice thinks that it would be wrong for Claudia to have it; 
Barbara think it would not be wrong.  According to appraiser's relativism 
(henceforth, simply "relativism") it is possible that both Alice and Barbara's 
beliefs are correct--they are both correct "relative to them."  This does not just 
mean that both equally think they are correct, but that what both believe is 
somehow equally correct.  Bottom line:  according to appraiser's relativism, two 
conflicting ethical beliefs (i.e., what each believes) can both be correct.
	B.  Metaethical relativism vs. a principle of cultural (or individual) 
tolerance which holds that one should not interfere with, or even judge, other 
cultures or persons.  The latter purports to be a nonrelativistic truth.
	C.  Likewise it is different from the view that people have the right to their 
own moral beliefs.  
	D.  And different also from the view that what it is right to do will depend 
crucially on circumstances, or even on particular cultural conventions or 
traditions.  [This is closer to agent's relativism in any case.]  For example, 
whether certain behavior is likely to be taken in a given culture as showing respect 
will depend heavily on specific cultural traditions, but that doesn't mean that, 
given a cultural context within which a given act takes place, there is not a truth 
about its appropriateness.
	E.  Finally, it differs from the view that there are deep differences in 
ethical belief between different groups or cultures.  Whether that is true or not, it 
is an anthropological, rather than a metaethical thesis.

III  The issue in question is whether it is possible for two genuinely conflicting 
ethical beliefs equally to be valid or correct.  To focus on this, we need one final 
distinction, namely between whether two people are equally justified in believingas 
they do and whether what they believeis equally valid or correct.  The former can 
occur even when one of the two beliefs is absolutely correct.  For example, there 
may have been times when the state of evidence justified someone in believing the 
world to be flat.  But even then that belief was (absolutely) false.  

	Thus even if in ethics the situation is so messy that conflicting ethical 
attitudes are always equally justified in this sense, this would not show that 
conflicting ethical beliefs can both be true.  To return to the example, even if both 
Alice or Barbara are equally justified in believing as they do, it does not follow 
that what each believes is equally correct, valid, or true.

IV  Now we can state Lyons's argument for suspecting that it is deeply 
incoherent.  We might put the dilemma this way.  When Alice and Barbara 
respectively assert, "Claudia's proposed abortion would be wrong" and "Claudia's 
proposed abortion would not be wrong," either both mean the same thing by 
'wrong' or they do not.

	(a) Suppose the latter.  Suppose that what Alice means by 'wrong' is 
"wrong-relative-to-me(Alice)" and that what Barbara means is "wrong-relative-to-
me(Barbara)".  In this case, it would seem that it might well be possible for their 
respective beliefs both to be true;  so that part seems all right.  But precisely for 
that reason their beliefs don't genuinely conflict.  

	(b)  Suppose, then, that they mean the same thing by 'wrong'.  The 
question then is simply how their beliefs could possibly both be true.  One asserts 
something has a property which the other denies that thing has.  How could 
something both have and not have the same property?

V  Thus, Lyons argues that appraiser's relativism faces a dilemma, neither horn of 
which is tenable.  Faced with this dilemma, it seems likely that relativists will 
want to live with alternative (a) and, therefore, with the fact that ethical beliefs do 
not literally conflict.  But then this may seem reduce ethics to questions of taste, 
which they clearly do not seem to be "from the inside" when we hold an ethical 
conviction.  Can we seriously believe that there really is no issue between Alice 
and Barbara, or between ourselves, when they or we say things like: "X is wrong" 
and "X is not wrong"?